Harvard Ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes conducted groundbreaking plant research in the Amazon rainforests in the 1940s. After WWII began, the United States government sent Schultes to the South America to investigate disease-resistant rubber plants needed for war effort and to research curare, a plant medicine that had been as a muscle relaxant since the 1930s. Until then, curare was only known to modern medicine as an Amazon dart poison. In the 1950s, Schultes was the first to write about ayahuasca in academic journals. ​N,N-dimethyltryptaine (DMT) is the hallucinogenic constituent of the South American shamanic brew ayahuasca. Schultes, who lived among indigenous communities who used ayahuasca for spiritual and medicinal purposes, was the first to describe ayahuasca tea in Western academic journals.

​B. caapi contains a monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI) that inhibits the breakdown of DMT (a monoamine) by monoamine oxidase enzymes located in the human digestive tract.

Banisteriopsis caapi

Psychotria viridis

Consumption of DMT in an ayahuasca tea formulation allows absorption of DMT into the body and creates an extended experience that last a few hours. The fact that ayahuasca comes from a tea made from multiple plants makes it difficult to study in the United States.

The Veterans Affairs Healthcare System is arguably the best we have in the United States, yet even it cannot provide adequate mental health care to patients. We must do better in the United States and it must start with large-scale, culturally competent, government-sponsored research of classic hallucinogens and mindfulness. Both are archaic means of resilience that will not bankrupt the nation.